Ku'oko'a plans to sell off HEI’s American Savings Bank and focus on replacing HECO’s, MECO’s and HELCO’s diesel and petroleum generators with new geothermal facilities.

Ku'oko'a Roald Marth spoke at a crowded Kona Town Meeting on February 11, 2011. Big Island Video News wrote a story and produced a video of the meeting

Roald Marth stated in part: "If you read the newspapers to much, you’re gonna figure out that their kind of laughing at us, and we think that's okay, cause they basically call us the tomato farmer, that's Richard, the government bureaucrat, that's Ted, and the motivational speaker, and that's me, and there's now about 25 or 30 of us behind the scenes. ...

What we would do as fast as possibly could, is we would not build 200 MW of geothermal, we would attempt to build about 2000 MW of geothermal on the Big Island. Now this would take an investment totally of about $12B. ... It would generate, we estimate, about 30,000 jobs for 10 years, would allow the county, we think we could generate $300-400M of extra revenue for the county ... $1-2B of revenue for the State on an annual basis, and we are going to lower electric rates to 20 cents a kWhr. ...Now, we need the legislature to back moving faster, okay, because if we don't have the political world behind us we can't get the money. We can't get the money we can't fix the problem."

Great idea, now I'm beginning to think I should spend the $2 billion to buy the companies. Since neither Ku'oko'a or I have $2 billion like them I'm going to borrow it, purchase HEI and then saddle the new HEI with that debt. That way I own HEI and owe the banks nothing. Next I will offshore what ever HEI's jobs I can to save money and then sell what's left of the HEI skeleton and retire. This type of investment game which was mostly illegal before Ronald Reagan became President has virtually destroyed American industry. If Ku'oko'a actually has the ability to raise $2 billion dollars and not burden HEI with the $2 billion debt then good for them. If they don't then we need to watch them closely.

HECO has a very poor bond rating. If a company with a higher bond rating were to borrow money, they would pay a lower interest rate. The differential in interest payments between companies with good and bad bond ratings may be sufficient to offset the cost to acquire HEI. Or so says Ku`oko`a.